


In Love and War

by Katrina



Series: Modernverse [8]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-15
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katrina/pseuds/Katrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written by Pegunicent: Des's PoV, deciding going back. Takes place after I am the Highway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> Written by Pegunicent on Livejournal/Insanejournal. Posted with permission so the series is together.

Des dreamed about the first time he ran away. He'd been twelve at the time, he'd packed his backpack with clothes and some food and money he'd stolen from Ezio's room. He'd known better than to try the bus, he'd started just walking and headed East. 86% of people on the run went West. He'd been on the road almost a full week before his luck ran out and a pair of cops recognized his picture from the Amber Alert and pulled him in.

Ezio had been furious, Atair had been scared. Their parents...

Des remembered how their parents had simply wanted to know why and his answer had been as plain as their confusion. “I'm done being your experiment.”

Altair had left that year and filed the papers for Ezio and Iolair to emancipate themselves. It took the courts forever to process them and Des had ended up spending three months in Juvenile Protection. Gallagher Enterprises started their slow decline with the media fiasco. By twenty Altair had bought their parents out and re-built the company into A+E.

What Desmond dreamed of though was the ache in his legs from walking mile after mile, the constant gurgle in his stomach from being empty and the feeling, in his heart, of finally being free.

Freedom was painful. Freedom was lonely. Freedom was terrifying.

Altair gave them an apartment and made sure they finished school and gave them part of the company he was setting up. He provided jobs and an allowance and Ezio adapted enough to play peace keeper between the old guard (until suitable replacements could be found) and the new staff. Ezio tried to make them adhere to family traditions, tried to keep their parents tied to them with birthday parties and cards and long distance phone calls.

(Until Mother miscarried trying to produce another child. A girl. Altair demanded a paternity test that resulted in their parents finally cutting off all ties and under intense legal scrutiny)

Des changed his name at fourteen. He ran away again three weeks later. This time he liquidated everything in his accounts, packed a single suitcase and went North. He fell off the grid and stayed off it. He learned how to see the colors around people and things that meant safety or danger. He trained his body in every mean, nasty trick he could, stretching and bending and flipping the way anyone would show him how to. He learned to break into places he shouldn't be, speak Mandarin, Spanish, Russian and Farsi.

He learned to like metal and ink and pain and boyfriends who treated him like shit and girlfriends who treated him worse.

Freedom is terror and pain and sacrifice.

In five years he traveled on fishing ships and courier planes, saw parts of the world National Geographic missed, met people that were real and beautiful in ways that went down to the soul. He fell in love with music and motorcycles and automatics.

He never meant to stop running, even after Altair finally tracked him down in Peru. He was free. It was hard, he'd been in enough fights and escaped prison by the skin of his teeth enough times to know his life wasn't fit for living to old age. Something in his brother's eyes changed his mind though. He agreed to come 'home'. Just for a while. For that glint of something like honest regret in his brother's eyes.

But it wasn't enough. Chains of blood weren't enough to hold him here.

Des woke up feeling the comfortable cold in his heart that never seemed to really leave, and the remembered ache of walking until he fell over. Climbing out of his clean if incredibly old motel bed, he peered at himself in the dingy bathroom mirror and tried to see that twelve year old boy under the piercings and tattoos.

There was his first flirt with ink, bold lettering just under his belly. 'Credo Quia Absurdum Est'. I believe it because it is absurd.

It made sense at the time and even now he had to quirk a small grin, flick the belly ring and let his eyes wander. There were the loops in his nipples, acquired in New York by a girl with implanted horns that made her hair grow in tufts. The snake bite on the left lower lip to balance out the scar on the right. The nose stud and eyebrow and five climbing holes in each ear. He'd put in his silver ball stud earrings before going to see Leo last. Just like he'd put in the green smiley face bar in his tongue.

Snorting at himself for drifting, he traced the loops and swirls of his arm sleeve, done over ten hours in a back alley parlor in Volgograd. He'd drawn it up himself, the hidden Hawaiian symbol for paradise an ironic and fitting bit of hilarity. Like the Hebrew over his ass that he'd got while puking up his guts on a Chinese pirate vessel, sick of bad food and worse water. Love everyone, Trust few, and Harm none. He kept meaning to find a time and place to moon Altair just to show it off.

Of course, that also had to be the time and place he showed Ezio the front, just to watch his slut of a playboy brother's balls try to climb back into his pelvis. The nine rung Jacob's ladder would do it alone, a gift from a very supportive cougar down in Spain, but the Holy Cross would really blow poor Ezio's brain. It had been by far the most painful piece of masochism Desmond had ever subjected himself to. Months to heal, hating on life and morning wood.

The full pant leg of Sanskrit prayer wheel scrollwork that had taken five days in eight hour sessions with bone needles had been a breeze compared to the Cross. He'd trek back to Peru on foot across the Mohave before he ever went through something like the Cross again.

But freedom was pain. And the end was always worth the means.

Staring into the mirror he tried to find that twelve-year-old boy. All he saw was scars and metal and ink.

He'd go back. In time. He'd go back and give Altair an answer for why he was leaving. His brother deserved that at least for tracking him down and trying to reconnect. And he'd talk to Leonardo. He'd probably do a bit more yelling than talking but the man had a point in his hesitancy. So he deserved at least something from Des to. Then he could leave without holding onto anything.


End file.
